One application of multi-lens capture is the creation of integral image elements which use a lenticular lens sheet or a fly's eye lens sheet, and a three-dimensional integral image aligned with the sheet, so that a user can view the three-dimensional image without any special glasses or other equipment, are known. Such imaging elements and their construction, are described in "Three-Dimensional Imaging Techniques" by Takanori Okoshi, Academic Press, Inc., New York, 1976. Integral image elements having a lenticular lens sheet (that is, a sheet with a plurality of adjacent, parallel, elongated, and partially cylindrical lenses) are also described in the following U.S. Patents: U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,254; U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,533; U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,608; U.S. Pat. No. 5,455,689; U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,478; U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,254; U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,533 and others; as well as allowed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/931,744. Three-dimensional integral image elements with lenticular lens sheets, use interlaced vertical image slices from captured views of a scene taken at positions which are laterally shifted with respect to one another. These interlaced slices are aligned with the lenticules so that a three-dimensional image is viewable when the lenticules are vertically oriented with respect to a viewer's eyes.
The final integral image may either be viewed by light transmitted through it, or may be coated with a reflective layer behind the image such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,751,258, U.S. Pat. No. 2,500,511, U.S. Pat. No. 2,039,648, U.S. Pat. No. 1,918,705 and GB 492,186.
One method of capturing the laterally shifted views of a scene, is to use conventional photographic film in a camera having two or more lenses laterally spaced apart. When a scene is to be captured, the respective shutters for the lenses are opened simultaneously so as to expose different frames of the film to the respective views seen by the two or more lenses. When a scene is captured by such a camera then, it will be captured as a set of frames which record respective different views of the single scene. Different scenes can be captured on the same film so that an exposed film may contain one or more sets of frames for the one or more scenes captured. Such a camera is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,960,563 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,798.
The importance of the values of various quantities in obtaining integral images of good quality was appreciated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,960,563. However,, these quantities were to be pre-calculated and set before a given scene was captured. Such a technique is highly impractical where a user desires to spontaneously capture a scene. U.S. Pat. No. 4,965,626 describes recording on a film in a conventional single lens camera, specified picture taking conditions such as camera orientation, date of exposure, and time of exposure and the like. However, no guidance on improving the realism of a lenticular image is provided, nor is there any guidance on how automatic interlacing of frames from a single set in a film containing multiple sets, might be accomplished.
Exposed and processed film from a multi-lens camera of the above type can be automatically scanned in a known manner to generate signal files (typically digital image files) representing images on the film. The scanned images can then be interlaced in a known manner, such as by a suitably programmed digital computer, to form an integral image.
However, in the foregoing process, no information is available to the computer which enables an accurate reproduction of the original scene. For example, in order to obtain a realistic reproduction of the scene when the integral image is viewed, the distance by which the multiple lenses of the camera were spaced apart during film exposure, will affect the positioning of the interlaced lines beneath lenticules of a lenticular sheet. Yet neither this information nor any other information is available to the computer which will allow it to automatically generate an integral image which will realistically reproduce the original scene.
It would be desirable then to provide a camera which can simultaneously capture a set of frames recording respective different views of a single scene, and which camera will provide a means by which the resulting exposed film can be automatically handled to produce a realistic integral image product. It would also be desirable to provide a process for automatically forming an integral image from such a film and an apparatus for performing such a method.